Thursday, November 15, 2012

The long Jewish history of Gaza

Mosaic flooring in a 6th century synagogue in GazaWith rocket attacks from Gaza into Israel once again topping the news headlines, it is as well to recall that Gaza has not always been an Arab city: Jews have lived there for centuries.

As Dr Shaul Zadka reminded us in a talk in London last night, one of Gaza's notable Jewish inhabitants was the 17th century Nathan of Gaza. He can best be described as spin-doctor for Shabbetai Zvi, who wreaked mayhem across the Jewish and non-Jewish world, proclaiming himself the Messiah.

Since 2006, not a single Jew has lived in Gaza, after Israel pulled out 8,000 Israeli civilians from the territory. It looks like there may not be many Christians left there either, following harassment and forced conversions after Hamas took over control.

"Gaza is within the boundaries of Shevet Yehuda in Biblical
Israel (see Genesis
15, Joshua
15:47, Kings
15:47 and Judges
1:18) and
therefore some have argued that there is a Halachic requirement to live
in this land. The earliest settlement of the area is by Avraham and
Yitzhak, both of whom lived in the Gerar area of Gaza. In the fourth
century Gaza was the primary Jewish port of Israel for international
trade and commerce.

The periodic removal of
Jews from Gaza goes back at least to the Romans in
61 CE,
followed much later by the Crusaders,
Napoleon, the Ottoman
Turks, the British and
the contemporary Egyptians. However, Jews
definitely lived in Gaza throughout the centuries,
with a stronger presence in the nineteenth
and early twentieth centuries.

"Jews were
present in Gaza until 1929, when they were
forced to leave the area due to violent
riots against
them by the Arabs. Following these riots,
and the death of nearly 135 Jews in all,
the British prohibited Jews from living in
Gaza to quell tension and appease the Arabs.
Some Jews returned, however, and, in 1946,
kibbutz Kfar
Darom was established to prevent the British
from separating the Negev from the Jewish
state.

"The United
Nations 1947 partition
plan allotted the
coastal strip from Yavneh to Rafiah on the
Egyptian border to be an Arab state. In
Israel's war
for independence, most Arab inhabitants
in this region fled or were expelled, settling
around Gaza City. Israeli forces conquered
Gaza, and proceeded south to El-Arish, but
subsequently gave control of the area to
Egypt in negotiations, keeping Ashdod and
Ashkelon. In 1956, Israel went to war with
Egypt, conquered Gaza again, only to return
it again.

With the 1967 Six
Day War, Israeli forces reentered
Gaza and captured it. During the war, Israel
had no idea what it would do with the territory.
Eshkol called it “a bone stuck in
our throats.”1"

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Introduction

In just 50 years, almost a million Jews, whose communities stretch back up to 3,000 years, have been 'ethnically cleansed' from 10 Arab countries. These refugees outnumber the Palestinian refugees two to one, but their narrative has all but been ignored. Unlike Palestinian refugees, they fled not war, but systematic persecution. Seen in this light, Israel, where some 50 percent of the Jewish population descend from these refugees and are now full citizens, is the legitimate expression of the self-determination of an oppressed indigenous, Middle Eastern people.This website is dedicated to preserving the memory of the near-extinct Jewish communities, which can never return to what and where they once were - even if they wanted to. It will attempt to pass on the stories of the Jewish refugees and their current struggle for recognition and restitution. Awareness of the injustice done to these Jews can only advance the cause of peace and reconciliation.(Iran: once an ally of Israel, the Islamic Republic of Iran is now an implacable enemy and numbers of Iranian Jews have fallen drastically from 80,000 to 20,000 since the 1979 Islamic revolution. Their plight - and that of all other communities threatened by Islamism - does therefore fall within the scope of this blog.)